The way to think and I am basing this on my first attempt at Silk Screen printing after a million years. The last try was in 2004. We are in 2021 now.

Silk screen printing, in its earliest formation in the mind meant, that you push a wiper like thing towards you. It pushes the paint or this thick paint solution which has been mixed with REDUCER. you are to push it with FULL STRENGTH towards your belly. I could feel it in my belly button that this object was coming towards me as i focused on the paint being wiped out, wiped away.

When i made the marks with a brush, i was visualising a sun and i was blocking the spaces where there would be no colour. And in the first attempt, there was confusion only. My cognition did not allow me to understand that where you make a mark with the paint, and in this case, it is not making a mark, but leaving a dab, stroke of paint on this transparent, see through sheet of something. This sheet of something was leaking paint. on the table below for your information. FYI.

As i tried to figure out what was going on, this mixture of, as told to me, gold and a colour was wiped away. There was a 200 gsm thick paper ( later i was shown 2000 gsm paper as well ) below this plastic sheet. And that is where marks were printed out. Where I applied colour, if i remember correctly, was left naked. and where i left blank, colour filled up the space.

It seemed like it was filling in colour exercise. But i can do that on a piece of paper. Give me a yellow marker and i will fill paper. But silk screen printing meant, you can repeat this on many other sheets, Till your shoulders give up i guess or you give up ?

No, this is not what SSP ( lets stick with this short form ). meant. It meant, I see on paper all those spaces where i made EFFORT of working with a brush. What i BLOCKED is now visible as an empty space.

But this VISUAL PHENOMENA changes. It changes with the relationship we form with the dynamics played out on the paper below. The sheet below can be called as the OUTPUT sheet. And this is where i witnessed this change. A plain piece of paper white in colour and when SSP process was done on a sheet with pre existing content it had very different out put. Come let me show you:

the empty white space is where i applied pressure with a bathroom wiper without a handle. It wiped out the paint that i had applied on the surface of the sheet. Leaving me puzzled, confused as to what happened on the sheet. I looked at the sheet and then tried to recall what i had done and got even more and more troubled mentally. how was i suppose to identify with this process or the fact that this is my work. I could not do CONTROL Z. Things became interesting when an existing surface was used for the same process.

this second layer excited me. The gold colour was already pre existing. very much like how you write on your Insurance form – Pre existing disease please mention. are you hypertensive? No I am not but i knew this sheet was hypertensively with a base colour and the moment the second layer came out. It contrasted from the original pink like colour on the first attempt sheet. Also it plays an illusion on your mind, that did i do the gold part and the red is bottom layer which gets revealed. and the effect of them overlapping each other.

To overlap could mean how leaves overlap themselves when you view a tree from a distance. It is a visual effect of a tree.

Unlike drawing on a paper with a drawing tool, SSP is a method ( and i have just started ) where you are transferring your marks someplace not visible in the first step. And you are always shielded from your results. The sheet and the wiper do all the work. Its like I could apply paint on my hands very painstakingly. and then i search for a surface to leave a print on.

From now on, I have gained respect for my bathroom wiper.

Place of visit: Pulp Society Print Studio, Okhla.

Nearby landmark: Nathu Sweets which does not have besan ki burfi.